The construction equipment developed in recent years is loaded with various controllers such as controllers for collecting information of the vehicle conditions (hereinafter, vehicle condition data) such as the present position of the vehicle, the clocked value of the service meter (cumulative operating time), the past history of the errors which occurred in the vehicle body, the past history of the error codes which occurred in the vehicle body, key switch information of whether or not the key switch is on at present (in the ACC position), the battery terminal voltage information of the present terminal voltage of the battery, and the start lock information of whether the start lock is valid or invalid, and the time zone of the start lock which is set at present. A CPU is provided in such an onboard controller, and executes arithmetic operation processing in accordance with the onboard program stored in the EEPROM (electrically erasable ROM) such as a flash memory and performs the processing of collecting the vehicle condition data and transmitting and receiving to and from an outside. For example, the onboard controller and the external server are communicably connected via the communication means such as the Internet, and the vehicle condition data collected in the onboard controller is transmitted to the server. Alternatively, a serviceman visits the construction equipment, connects a personal computer to the onboard controller and takes the vehicle condition data into the personal computer.
When the onboard program is upgraded, and when the threshold values and the like to create the error code for each vehicle and to determine an abnormality such as an error for each vehicle are desired to be changed, it is necessary to rewrite the old onboard program stored in the flash memory to a new onboard program.
Patent document 1 (Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 10-212739) describes providing of a controller for collecting its operation data and providing of a monitoring device having the function as a server at a remote site, concerning construction equipment. The operation data collecting controller and monitoring device are connected by a communication device, and the operation data processing program in the operation data collecting controller is rewritten in response to a demand from the monitoring device. Namely, when a new operation data processing program is sent from the monitoring device, a rewrite control program is started on the ROM of the operation data collecting controller in the construction equipment, rewrite processing is started, and the new operation data processing program is temporarily stored in a RAM. Thereafter, the new operation data processing program is transferred to an EEPROM from the RAM, and the system control right is transferred to the new operation data processing program.
Among the vehicle condition data collected in the construction equipment, the clocked value of the service meter (cumulative operating time), the past history of the errors which occurred in the vehicle body and the like are the data with continuity which should not be reset on the rewrite processing. The RAM, which is an internal memory of the onboard controller, has a small capacity in many cases. The RAM is designed with allowance given to the date capacity, but the code amount increases by the addition of the functions and the like thereafter, and therefore the capacity usable as the work area and temporary area in the RAM becomes smaller following the addition of the functions. Consequently, when the onboard program is rewritten into a new onboard program, the new onboard program is temporarily stored in the work area of the RAM, but due to insufficiency of the free space of the work area, there arises the fear that the onboard program of a large size cannot be reliably buffered in the work area of the RAM.
In this respect, Patent document 1 describes storing a new operation data processing program temporarily in the RAM, but it does not describe how the operation data with continuity existing on the same RAM is saved on the RAM in this situation.
During the normal operation, the operation data collection controller in the construction equipment collects the operation data and processes this in accordance with the operation data processing program, and transmits the processed operation data to the monitoring device in response to the demand from the monitoring device. At the time of rewrite, the new operation data processing program is transmitted from the monitoring device to the construction equipment, and the old operation data processing program is rewritten to the new operation data processing program in the operation data collection controller in the construction equipment.
A communication abnormality or hand-up sometimes occurs halfway through remotely rewriting the onboard program in the construction equipment from the server (monitoring device) in a remote site. When an abnormality occurs during the rewrite processing of the onboard program like this, the onboard program is not started thereafter and the onboard controller itself does not function, thus causing the fear that collection of the vehicle condition data becomes impossible during the normal operation. Especially when the rewrite processing is remotely performed from a remote site, a serviceman has to visit the construction equipment from the remote site to replace or repair the onboard controller every time a communication abnormality and hang-up occur. Due to this, operation efficiency of the construction equipment is sharply reduced, and a large number of workers and man hours and a lot of time are required for recovery.
The data amount of the onboard program is large and several hundreds kiro-bytes, and therefore when the onboard program is transmitted to a large number of units of construction equipment as the targets from the server (monitoring device), the communication path becomes so busy that it requires a long time to perform the rewrite processing. In such a case, the communication path is occupied by communication for the rewrite processing, and there arises the fear that the communication for the normal operation processing is suspended for a long time. In this respect, Patent document 1 has no description of the indication of the problem of the communication path being occupied for the rewrite processing, or the measures to avoid this.
If there is any abnormality such as a detect such as a loss in the element such as the RAM in the onboard controller, the onboard controller itself does not function halfway through the rewriting of the onboard program in the construction equipment remotely from the server (monitoring device) in the remote site, and collection of the vehicle condition data becomes impossible at the time of the normal operation. Especially, the onboard controller includes the function of outputting the start lock releasing command to the start lock circuit in accordance with the onboard program, and if the onboard controller does not function, the start lock cannot be released. However, since the construction equipment is sometimes operated in the harsh environments, the start lock release is indispensable. If the onboard controller does not function in the start lock state, it cannot move unless a serviceman visits the site and replaces the onboard controller or the like, and therefore availability is sharply reduced. Further, the construction equipment is frequently operated in remote corners of a country, and depending on the place in which the construction equipment is operated, there arises the fear that the communication is disconnected and the rewrite processing is not finished normally.
In this respect, the above-described Patent document 1 has no description concerning avoidance of the aforementioned problems in advance on the occasion of performing the rewrite processing.